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Subject: To Recurse or not to Recurse...

Author: Steve Maughan

Date: 05:30:04 10/31/00


In my chess program I use recursion to carry out the basic alpha beta search.
However while on one of the Delphi newsgroup I was told that recursion is a
source of significant inefficiency and that _ALL_ recursive algorithms can be
converted into an iterative form that is generally faster.  Upon searching the
net I found this site:

http://www.geocities.com/zabrodskyvlada/aat/a_recu.html

This basically shows that the recursive version of a sort runs at half the speed
of the alternative version.  Moreover, thinking back I remember that Ed Schroder
mentioned that he doesn't use recursion.

How many people do use recusion?

Is there any literature on non recursive alpha / beta?

Has anyone done any comparisons between recursive and none recursive searches?

Regards,

Steve



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